Kaleidoscope
by Unlimited Blade Works
Summary: The Second True Magic, The Kaleidoscope, allows it's user Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg to move through the multi-verse at will. Sometimes someone gets lucky, or unlucky depending on your view, to run into him, or he runs into them. Whether or not this is a good thing, well I'll leave that up to you.


**Kaleidoscope**

 **Chapter One: No One Wants to but Everyone Gets To.**

 **Authors Note-**

Just something that's been bouncing around in my head for the last four and a half hours.

Not Beta'd or proof read, enjoy

 **Start-**

Harry Potter looked up at the sky, it really was a beautiful night. The moon was full and the stars were out, thanks to the fact that he was deep inside the black forest of Germany there was no light pollution to drown out his view over head, he only had the trees canopy to compete with. The full moon was shining down with more than enough light to illuminate the clearing he had chosen as a camp site. It really was a damn shame that he wouldn't be able to see this sight again as it easily ranked in the top ten of the most beautiful things he had ever seen.

Dying, it seemed, really did suck after all.

His once pristine camp site had been destroyed not ten minutes before, Death Eaters, supposedly reformed ones, had decided to crash his three week sabbatical on it's second day before he went off to Saint Mungo's to learn the finer points of healing. How they had managed to find him the eldest Potter child was not entirely sure but they had caught him with his pants down and now he was going to die because of it.

Well at least the sky was a nice thing to view on his way out.

The dying man shifted on the tree he was lying against, no way he was standing he couldn't even feel his legs anymore and everything else was going numb, shock Harry figured. The dark haired teen brought his hand away from his stump of a right arm, Bombardia Maxima that one. Had taken off his arm four inches above his elbow near the end of the fight, the pain had opened him up to a piercing curse that had, to the best of his rather extensive medical knowledge, managed to not only clip his spine on the way out but likely pierce part of his stomach.

Honestly Harry was amazed he was still concious, then again his mother had always called him stubborn but there was no way out of this one. There was an Anti-Portkey Ward up he'd already tried his emergency one and since he couldn't stand that was Apparition out. As for communicating well all his communication devices from his mobile phone to the enchanted two way mirror had been in his tent, which was currently still on fire and providing quite a bit of warmth. Or at least Harry assumed it was providing quite a bit of warmth, he really couldn't feel it anymore.

Three men, not even a hit team of five, three men got the drop on him and this was the result, Harry guessed that the element of surprise was worth more than he had ever given it credit for. Hell the only reason that all of his attackers were dead was a mixture of luck and his own training, not that he had a choice in that last part. Ever since Michael had been the one to defeat The Dark Lord Voldemort at age one he had been put through the ringer as far as training was concerned in order to protect him when the time came.

The element of surprise really did count for a lot, though in Harry's own defence all three of them were members of Voldemort's Inner Circle. From what he'd been able to tell amidst all the fast paced movement the three were Walden Macnair, Yaxley, Harry had never learned his last name as nobody seemed to know it, and last, but since his Bombardia Maxima was the reason he was missing an arm Harry hardly counted him as the 'least', Antonin Dolohov.

Well at least he'd gone down against three of the Death Eaters best duellist's, not that it made dying any better but it soothed his somewhat bruised pride in his final minutes. Maybe this was what he got for not taking his training as seriously as his Father had always wanted him to, sure Harry understood that Michael was going to need people who knew what they were doing to protect him but he had never been given a choice as to whether or not it was to be him. Even now that kind of irked him, sure Harry acknowledged that given the choice he would likely had agreed either way but it was that lack of a choice that had frustrated the hell out of him.

Most people when they went home from Hogwarts did homework and saw their friends, he got thrown straight into a, admittedly tamer, version of the Auror training program. He got one free day every two weeks other than that it was train, train and more training. His mother had made opposed on occasion but his father or Dumbledore would just bring up the fact that Voldemort would return one day and they needed, he needed, to be ready for that then Lilly Potter's defence would just crumble like sand before a hurricane.

At his lowest points Harry had bitterly assumed that it was because she favoured Michael more and wanted him to have a trained guard dog at his beck and call. Now bleeding out onto the floor of a forest about to die he felt something vastly different, shame and guilt at those very thoughts. His mother had never once favoured Michael more than him, she simply hadn't wanted him to die and he had been to absorbed thinking that he always drew the short straw compared to his brother to ever see it from her point of view.

Made him feel ever worse truly, since both of his parents had not wanted him to go on this trip from the start stating that it was too dangerous, he'd blown them both off and then manipulated, and it was manipulation, them into letting him go anyway. It had been simple really, he'd just told them that he had been forced to live his entire life for his brothers sake and never for his own, they hadn't said a damned thing to him seemingly drawing into themselves and just leaving the room.

Neither had tried to stop him again.

Harry knew he had a point in saying that as well, from age eleven his entire life had been dedicated to making sure his brother would be fine, to make sure that Michael would have a protector and The Order of the Phoenix would have a soldier when the time came. He knew he definitely had a point but that didn't mean that he was right, it simply meant that his view on it was one of many, each of them likely just as correct.

His father and mother had not wanted him to die in a war that they knew was coming, protecting his brother was just a bonus. It wasn't like they played favourites with that either, after his first year at Hogwarts Michael had been thrown into the same training program he had been, though admittedly more toned down and stream lined since his father now knew exactly how hard he could push an eleven year old, unlike the trial and error approach that Harry had to endure.

Hell his own personal rebellion had also been the reason that he had chosen to enrol his name at Saint Mungo's in an attempt to become a Healer. His father and mother had both wanted him to join the Auror Corps and Harry could quite easily see why, he knew the training already and he had the skills of a Junior Auror when he was fifteen, just missing the experience to make up the difference between a Junior Auror and a real Auror. It would have also made sure he was ready and even better trained when the next war started, instead he had chosen a different road.

Admittedly Harry knew he had been resentful, at the time he had seen it as yet another choice he was being forced to give up for The Greater Good. The Greater Good, Dumbledore had explained it to him once, there was the theoretical version and the practical version. Theoretically it meant doing what was right simply because it was the right thing to do, certainly an excellent idea in theory but as Dumbledore himself had stated everything worked in theory. Then there was the practical version of the phrase, The Needs of the Many. It meant taking the road that would save the greatest amount of lives and cause the least amount of suffering no matter the cost to ones self.

Unlike his parents who had taken weeks to reconcile the fact that he had not chosen to become an Auror Dumbledore had just called him up to his office. The older man had not said anything just pouring the two of them a tumbler of Whisky, the normal stuff, good too. After half a dozen sips in silence the old Wizard had looked him up and down before nodding to himself and stating that there were things one should do and things one needed to do then advised Harry to always know which was which then sending him on his way.

No words of condemnation, no subtle prods to change his mind, nothing of the sort just a simple piece of advice. The two of them had not spoken since and considering he would be dead inside of the next ten to twenty minutes Harry knew that they would not do so again.

Reaching around with his left hand the dark haired teen found what he was looking for, a small pack of cigarettes, one thankfully not spoiled by his blood. About damned time he'd had some luck today, the cigarettes were his stress relief when he was younger and eventually had turned into a habit due to their addictive nature.

A man who wanted to be a Healer was also a Smoker, one of the leading causes of lung cancer, amongst others, in the world.

The irony was not lost on him.

Fumbling for his lighter Harry managed to get it out from his right hand pocket and pull the device to his 'cancer stick' as Tonks used to call them. Then again she had never turned him in for them and given him the flip top lighter in the first place, the word dumbass engraved on the side in cursive script. Sure it was an insult but it was also kind of accurate and, more importantly, a really nice lighter so Harry had kept what he was sure was a gag gift and used it ever since.

It took him two flicks to make the wick catch and light his cigarette the sweet relief of nicotine flooding his brain. He was dying and one last cigarette was something Harry felt would be appropriate. After all his brain wasn't providing him with any other revelations while he was on deaths door so it was probably just time for him to wind the clock down and enjoy the sky. Not that he had much of a choice in the matter, what with being unable to move and all.

"Ah hell I don't want to die." The dark haired teen lamented to himself, feeling his conciousness slip away just a little bit further as he did so. At any other time and in just about any other place he'd try to conserve his strength as much as possible, on the off chance that help came but out here that just wasn't going to happen.

"No one really does but everyone gets to, I find that to be one of the fairest parts of life really." The words were spoken calmly and without haste but held within them the weight of both age and power. Forcing his neck to turn Harry spied the man, and with that tone it could not have been a woman, who had just spoken. If nothing else he was certainly tall, maybe it was the fact he was sitting but Harry would guess that the man was probably a little over six foot in hight. Well trimmed white hair that led on to an equally well trimmed beard. His clothing was regal dark pants and shirt with gold trimming, even his dark green mantle was held closed by two large gold ropes, his most striking feature however was the two wine red eyes staring straight at him.

Usually, considering the stories about Voldemort, Harry would take the time after seeing red eyes to begin panicking and concocting plans to feel the immediate area as soon as humanly possible. The only reasons he was not doing that at present was quite simple, firstly he was physically incapable of such an action and secondly he was about to die in the next five minutes and nothing anyone did was going to change that. The only thing that the new comer could do, at worst, was speed up his passing. His hands had stopped listening to his orders a second ago, his cigarette smouldering on the leafy floor next to him. If using the Cruciatus curse was this man's game Harry said go right ahead, he was to numb to feel it and the curse would likely just push him into deaths welcoming arms a few minutes ahead of schedule.

That was of course assuming that he actually was still alive and about to actually listen to someone and not hallucinating or already dead, both of those were actually far more likely than the man next to him actually existing after all.

"Ah I suppose you can't answer right now can you." It wasn't really a question the man, who may or may not exist, sounded rather jolly as he said that as well. "Well anyway glad I caught you on your way out as it were," The red eyed man stated with a grin, was the human mouth actually capable of showing that many teeth in one go?

"You see Harry James Potter my name is Kischur Zelretch Schweinorg," The old man with the too large girn introduced himself with a flourish. "And I have a proposition for you."

 **Chapter One- End**


End file.
